Fruit and veg and ice cream

Time was, finding odd fruits, vegetables and spices in beer was a source of excitement for me. These days, I think we're largely better off without them. The wide-eyed innocence hasn't quite gone away, however, so when I spotted that Mad Scientist of Budapest had put out a beer made with spinach, I bought it immediately, against my better judgement.

My better judgement could see that Sippin' On Spinach And Juice is an "ice cream sour", so likely gloopy-textured and overly sweet. Still I was prepared to give it a fair shake. I wish I'd given the can a literal shake before opening it: what poured out was not homogeneous, starting on a watery green trickle, followed by thick pulpy gobbets, settling into the glass looking decidedly bilious: the dull grey-green of institutional vegetable soup, marbled by macerated leaf bits. It looks impressive, but awful.

The beer wasn't as sweet as I expected it to be, and is light-bodied too, reflecting its mere 2.5% ABV. A non-descript tartness is the first flavour manifest, possibly stemming from the kiwifruit in the recipe. There's banana too, and that's next, making it taste like a smoothie even if it doesn't have the density of one. It finishes quickly after that, with no sign of the spinach, nor indeed anything I could pin as ice cream. It's inoffensive overall, certainly once you get past the appearance. I hope I got some health benefit from it, because the taste didn't do anything much for me.

So it wouldn't be lonely, I picked another Mad Scientist beer in the same genre to go with it: Oolong Lagoon, made with peach, apricot and tea. It's only 2.2% ABV, and instead of vegetable soup, looks like carrot soup, which at least is a step upmarket. I was prepared for the thinness this time, and as before there's no vanilla or creaminess to impart the impression of ice cream. Oolong is the absent ingredient in this one: I couldn't find any part of it that tasted like tea. We're spared the banana, leaving just the stonefruit, which tastes tart, juicy and real.

The sour side is less pronounced in this, and while it doesn't have a thick, lactose-derived sweet aspect, there is a tinned-peach element, adding a certain degree of dessertishness. There's another abrupt finish, though the concentrated peach juice does make a return in the aftertaste. It's simple stuff, doing the basics but no more than that.

I really expected more drama from this pair than I got. The only really "wrong" thing here is the presentation of the spinach one; otherwise they're all a bit normal and plain. Their thin textures are where I really felt wrong-footed: ice cream should mean ice cream. I appreciated the modest level of actual sourness but I still won't be making a habit of drinking this kind of beer regularly.